Biden pushes climate plans left out of deal

President Joe Biden is not giving up on creating a national clean electricity standard and providing $300bn in clean energy tax credits that were left out of an infrastructure deal struck last week with Republicans.

Biden wants to advance his proposed Energy Efficiency and Clean Electricity Standard (EECES) and the new clean energy tax credits "through additional congressional action, including budget reconciliation," according to a memo the White House released today that is co-authored by national climate adviser Gina McCarthy. Budget reconciliation is the process that would allow Democrats to pass legislation with their 50-50 majority in the US Senate.

The memo is part of Biden's push to assure progressive Democratic lawmakers and activists that he will continue to push for climate-focused legislation, after key programs were excluded from the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal. The EECES would be modeled off state programs and could require utilities or grid operators to procure increasing amounts of low-carbon electricity or enact energy efficiency measures. Biden's tax credit push would expand incentives for wind, solar and electric transmission and eliminate $35bn of tax benefits for oil and gas over the next decade.

But the memo language is ambiguous about whether the administration believes the tax credits and the EECES would align with strict reconciliation rules. The $300bn in tax credits could easily comply with those rules, but for the EECES to be included Democrats would have to tie it to the budget. It will fall to the Senate's parliamentarian to decide what can remain in the budget bill, although Democrats could overrule that decision.

Biden and his cabinet are fanning out across the US to sell the bipartisan infrastructure deal, after a rocky rollout last week where some Republicans backing the deal balked at Biden's push to tie its passage to the reconciliation package. Biden argues the infrastructure plan is needed to modernize roads, drinking water, leaking oil and gas pipelines and the electric grid.

"You saw what happened in Texas this winter, the entire system in the state collapsed," Biden said last night in La Crosse, Wisconsin, referring to several days of power outages across much of Texas in February. "That is why we have to act."

Democrats have some momentum in their push to pass the infrastructure package and the budget bill together sometime this summer. US senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) yesterday said he was open to voting on a budget bill even if it does not draw any Republican votes, a key requirement because the Senate is evenly divided 50-50, where vice president Kamala Harris would offer a tie-breaking vote.

"Then we are going to have to work it through reconciliation, which I have agreed that can be done," Manchin said in a televised interview. "I just have not agreed on the amount because I haven't seen everything that everybody is wanting to put into the bill."

By Chris Knight